The present invention relates to an image communication apparatus for ejecting a liquid droplet onto a recording member to perform image recording.
In general, a so-called ink-jet recording system for ejecting a droplet of a liquid such as an ink onto a record sheet according to recording information to perform image recording is known.
The ink-jet recording system has the following drawbacks.
(1) The ink-jet recording system often causes a printing error due to evaporation or drying of ink or clogging of nozzles with dust, and in a non-recording state, a preservation operation of a head such as capping is necessary.
(2) In order to suppress such a printing error, head recovery operations such as idle ejection of all the nozzles, an ink supply operation, and the like must be performed before printing, and a considerable time is required until recording is ready.
(3) When a head has a large number of nozzles, in particular, in a line head, a probability of omission of printing dots is increased.
Such drawbacks pose serious problems particularly when the ink-jet recording system is applied to an apparatus which has a relatively long standby time without recording, e.g., an image communication apparatus such as a facsimile.
Therefore, an ink-jet image communication apparatus comprising a recording head having a plurality of nozzles has not been realized yet.